I wouldn't just go out and buy the DLC. There is so much content in the game already - play a bit of the career mode, you will get more than enough cars etc. Unless there is a car you really want that is only available as DLC then you could get it, but otherwise I don't think you will miss out on anything.

I have no intention of playing through the career mode, just want to tune and race my favourite Jap imports online. How long do you think I'll need to spend in the career initially in order to buy my first car, tune it up to a decent standard, and then set up a self-generating cycle of winning credits online in order to fund further purchases and upgrades and never have to play offline again?

Going by Forza 1, definitely. It's a very tailorable game and the skill/reward ratio adjusts accordingly. No racing game better bridges the gap between hardcore sim and accessibility, and indeed with all the sim options dialled up to 11, Forza makes a damned fine racing simulation to boot.

Dixons wrote:
I have no intention of playing through the career mode, just want to tune and race my favourite Jap imports online. How long do you think I'll need to spend in the career initially in order to buy my first car, tune it up to a decent standard, and then set up a self-generating cycle of winning credits online in order to fund further purchases and upgrades and never have to play offline again?

If at first you don't succeed...

On a related note, the DLC cars. If you buy them, can you use them online to earn credits straight away, thus circumventing the solo career mode entirely?

How much you have to play the career mode will depend on how good you are though. The game gives you your first car, so technically you could jump straight in and try and find matches at around the same performance rating as your own car, but you'd probably need to at least buy something decent before you started winning anything, even using the starting cash for the optimal low performance rating impact modifications will only take a starting car so far.

Make sure you have bought all the cars from that region if you are after the achievements and are going to switch regions as it cost more every time you switch ie 100,000 1st switch, 500,000 2nd switch, unsure about 3rd. You will be on the same level but will have to level up to unlock cars from that region so try to get as far as you can in 1 region 1st.